Atmospheric

Overturning the conventional theory that airborne soot emissions cause regional cooling it has been found that brown clouds of airborne soot can contribute up to a third of atmospheric warming anomalies in the tropics formerly ascribed to CO2 (50 percent ...

Observations and climate model results confirm that human-induced warming of the planet is having a pronounced effect on the atmosphere’s total moisture content. “When you heat the planet, you increase the ability of the atmosphere to hold moisture,” said ...

Scientists believe that shortly after Earth was formed, it had a glowing surface of molten rock extending down hundreds of miles. As that surface cooled, a rigid crust was produced near the surface and solidified slowly downward to complete the now-solid p ...

The growth and conversion of biofuel crops could raise rather than lower greenhouse gas emissions, says a new study led by Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen, best known for his work on the ozone layer. He and his colleagues have calculated that grow ...

An international team of researchers has determined there was a "whiff" of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere about 2.5 billion years ago, the earliest time any significant amount of oxygen has been detected on Earth. Up to now, scholars believed ...

Deep-sea temperatures rose 1,300 years before atmospheric CO2, ruling out the greenhouse gas as the driver of the meltdown, says a new study. “There has been this continual reference to the correspondence between CO2 and climate change as reflected in ice ...

Some of the elements necessary to support life on Earth are widely known- oxygen, carbon and water, to name a few. Just as important in the existence of life as any other component is the presence of adenine, an essential organic molecule. Without it, the ...

Planetary scientists on both sides of the Atlantic have tracked down a rare molecule in the atmospheres of both Mars and Venus. The molecule, an exotic form of carbon dioxide, could affect the way the greenhouse mechanism works on Venus. The discovery is b ...

A new paper estimates that fires in the continental United States and Alaska release about 44 metric tons of mercury into the atmosphere every year. It is the first study to estimate mercury emissions for each state, based on a new computer model developed ...

Geologists have uncovered evidence of when Earth may have first supported an oxygen-rich atmosphere similar to the one we breathe today. The study suggests that upheavals in the earth’s crust initiated a kind of reverse-greenhouse effect 500 million years ...